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ABSTRACT - DRUM - University of Maryland

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4.2 Collective states <strong>of</strong> many-anyon system<br />

The microscopic calculations <strong>of</strong> the degeneracy splitting for a pair <strong>of</strong> vortices<br />

are important for understanding the collective states <strong>of</strong> anyons arising on top <strong>of</strong><br />

the non-Abelian parent state when many Majorana fermions (Ising anyons) are<br />

present [97, 98, 99, 92]. Essentially, the sign <strong>of</strong> the splitting favors certain fusion<br />

channel ( 1 or ψ in the terminology <strong>of</strong> Ref.[100]) when two vortices carrying Majorana<br />

fermions are brought together. These fusion channels correspond to having<br />

a fermion (ψ-channel when E + < 0) or no fermion (1-channel when E + > 0) left<br />

upon fusing <strong>of</strong> two anyons.<br />

For pedagogical reason we start with the dilute anyon density limit assuming<br />

that the average distance between Majorana fermions is large compared with the<br />

coherence length ξ. In this regime, the many anyon state <strong>of</strong> the system will resemble<br />

gas <strong>of</strong> weakly bound pairs <strong>of</strong> anyons formed out <strong>of</strong> two anyons separated by the<br />

smallest distance. Because <strong>of</strong> the exponential dependence <strong>of</strong> the energy splitting<br />

the residual “interactions” with other anyons are exponentially smaller and can be<br />

ignored. In this scenario the parent state remains unchanged.<br />

When the density <strong>of</strong> anyons is increased so that the average distance between<br />

them becomes <strong>of</strong> the order <strong>of</strong> the Majorana bound state decay length (coherence<br />

length ξ in p-wave superconductors or magnetic length l c in Quantum Hall states)<br />

the system can form a non-trivial collective liquid (Wigner crystal <strong>of</strong> anyons or<br />

some other incompressible liquid state).<br />

This question has been investigated in<br />

Refs. [101, 102, 103, 92]. Although our approach used to calculate energy splitting<br />

72

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